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Home»Documents » Why the cultural revolution was defeated - a 1979 paper. Nobody can deny that the coup d'etat of October 6, 1976 has resulted in a fundamental change in direction for China, and the dispute was between two fundamentally opposed political lines - whichever side you happen to agree with. Yet it was originally presented as merely the overthrow of four individuals who were described as Kuomintang agents etc., and their defeat was presented as a great victory for Mao Tsetung Thought and the Cultural Revolution. Quite clearly the Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung Thought has been defeated in China and this has had enormous repercussions for Marxist-Leninists, or "Maoists" around the world

Why the cultural revolution was defeated - a 1979 paper. Nobody can deny that the coup d'etat of October 6, 1976 has resulted in a fundamental change in direction for China, and the dispute was between two fundamentally opposed political lines - whichever side you happen to agree with. Yet it was originally presented as merely the overthrow of four individuals who were described as Kuomintang agents etc., and their defeat was presented as a great victory for Mao Tsetung Thought and the Cultural Revolution. Quite clearly the Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung Thought has been defeated in China and this has had enormous repercussions for Marxist-Leninists, or "Maoists" around the world

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this was presented at a conference in Adelaide, Australia in 1979

Quite clearly the
Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung Thought has been defeated in China
and this has had enormous repercussions for Marxist-Leninists, or"Maoists"
around the world. I won't spell out a proof that it has been defeated
as this is pretty obvious. Full documentation is provided in a booklet
called "The Capitalist Roaders are Still on the Capitalist Road", even
though that was written in March 1977, only 6 months after the coup.

The
policies now being implemented in China are precisely those denounced
as revisionist during the Cultural Revolution, and the people
implementing them include all those previously denounced as capitalist
roaders (with the exception of Lin Piao's group whose pro-Soviet
position has left them still on the outer, at least at present).

It
is now openly stated that the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution was a
"Gang of 4" period and a major disaster for China. Mao Tsetung himself
has not yet been denounced with the same vitriol as his wife, but it is
quite clear that he has been taken down several pegs, and his ideas are
no longer the guiding ideology of China. The only argument now concerns
whether the revisionist policies are correct, in which case they should
not be called revisionist.

Of
some importance in deciding about this, is the political record of
those supporting these policies. In my opinion the "Gang of 4" line was
open and above board. The policies they denounced Teng Hsiao-ping for,
in 1975-76,are exactly the policies he did in fact advocate - as is
proved conclusively by the fact that he is now busy implementing them.
But the opponents of the "Gang of 4" spent years declaring their
fervent support for Mao Tsetung Thought and the Cultural Revolution,
while really opposing it.

Nobody can deny that the coup d'etat of October 6, 1976 has resulted ina
fundamental change in direction for China, and the dispute was between
two fundamentally opposed political lines - whichever side you happen
to agree with. Yet it was originally presented as merely the overthrow
of four individuals who were described as Kuomintang agents etc., and
their defeat was presented as a great victory for Mao Tsetung Thought
and the Cultural Revolution.

In
my opinion this fundamental dishonesty precludes us from taking
seriously the arguments of those responsible for the coup or the
arguments of their parrots abroad. People in Australia who denounce
"Gang of 4" supporters here as "anti-Mao" and proceed to label them as
Sovietagents etc., will have no right to
be heard when they change to denouncing us for continuing to be
"pro-Mao". Just as the Albanian liners who claimed that the concept of
"three worlds" was obviously an attack on Mao's line have no right to
be heard when they now claim that Mao must be a revisionist since he
obviously supported this line.

In
the international communist movement I don't believe that there have
been any great achievements in building genuinely revolutionary parties
in advanced capitalist countries. But this was obscured for some time
by the comforting feeling that "eight hundred million Chinese can't be
wrong". The Albanians have accused the Chinese of never having been
enthusiastic about the various ML parties set up in the sixties and the
seventies and having regarded them as a bit of a nuisance. I think that
does describe Mao's attitude and it has proved to be correct.

The
international situation now is not one of "great disorder giving way to
great order" as the Convenor of this Conference introduced it, but
rather one of "great disorder giving way to even greater disorder" and
I think it will go on like this for some considerable time. There is no
longer any international centre people can look to for guidance and as
a result there is complete chaos. In my opinion most of the groups that
claim to be ML around the world are not merely wrong but right off the
planet. My own views are widely regarded in a similar light. So there
is some room for compromise.

There has been a fairlycomplete
collapse of Maoism since Mao's death. One section of Mao's former
followers continue to believe that "nine hundred million people are
even less likely to be wrong". Therefore they are following a line
diametrically opposed to Mao's and to their own previous views. Another
section has decided there must be a centre somewhere and are comforted
by the thought that maybe a couple of million Albanians can't be wrong.
After having produced innumerable diatribes to prove that the "theory
of the three worlds" was clearly an invention of the revisionists to
attack Mao's policies, they are now psyching themselves up to support
Albania's thesis that it was Mao's line and that Mao was a revisionist
since the 1930's.

Those
like the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) or Charles Betteheim,
former president of the France-China Friendship Association, who have
not deserted into one or other of the rabidly anti-Mao camps, have
nevertheless discovered that Mao was wrong on various key issues.

Bettleheim
and others have developed an explanation for the defeat of the "Gang of
4" due to insufficient democracy, excessive centralism, lack of
flexibility towards intellectuals etc. Bolshevism is fundamentally
rejected and Kautsky's critique of it is accepted in this analysis.

The
RCP(USA) fundamentally rejects Mao's united front line and the concept
of "three worlds". again breaking with fundamental principles of
Leninism.

Almost
everyone who supports Mao and his close colleagues in the "Gang of 5",
considers the whole basic direction of Chinese foreign policy in the
1970's to have been wrong. They either attribute it to revisionist
influences, in which case Mao must have been pretty opportunist to
allow himself to be so closely associated with it (even personally
inviting Nixon back for a second visit) or they regard it as a mistake
in which case it was a pretty big one.

In
evaluating the Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung Thought one simply
cannot ignore the fact that within a very short time after Mao's death,
unqualified support for Maoism has been almost completely
silenced around the world. The movement which Mao headed has almost
completely collapsed.

It
seems reasonable to conclude that there must be at least something
wrong with Mao Thought for it to have suffered such a crushing defeat.
My own opinion is that there is nothing wrong with itand itis
100% OK, A1, goodstuff that should be studied and followed. I take
comfort in the thought that this is not the first time Marxism has
suffered a crushing defeat and it has always managed to bounce back.
The best example is the complete collapse of the Second International
and the desertion of almost the whole world movement to revisionism and
syndicalism, in the first world war. I take great comfort from the
thought that this complete collapse of the Second International was
followed by the October revolution and the birth of the Third
International only 3 or 4 years later (although I don't really expect
that it will be that quick this time).

The
line I advocate includes a rigid defence of what I understand to be the
orthodox Maoist policies of the Chinese leadership before Mao's death.
Although I claim to be orthodox I have never been religious, and I hope
this orthodoxy will not be mistaken for dogmatism.

Since
my views are those of a very small minority, I have no difficulty at
all of being tolerant of opposing views, just in order to remain sane.
I hope I remember that when, as I fully expect to happen, the views I
hold become the dominant or majority views.

I
was never a religious supporter of Mao when he was alive, and that was
one reason I had no difficulty, and experienced no "crisis", about
continuing to uphold exactly the same views after he died. It is very
noticeable that it is precisely those whose support for Mao was
essentially religious rather than political, who have been the most
eager to abandon it in one direction or another.

To
understand the Cultural Revolution and its defeat in China, you have to
understand the class struggle in a developing third world country. To
understand Mao Tsetung Thought in China, you have to understand
Marxism. I think the bestbackground for that is an understanding of the class struggle and an application of Marxism in Australia.

My
understanding is that since liberation, China has developed as a class
society based on commodity production and wage labour. That means goods
are produced to be sold on the marketfor
money and people work in order to receive wages so they can buy goods.
These very fundamental features of the Chinese society are quite
similar to the corresponding situation in Australia and other
capitalist societies. They give rise to a class struggle between
different sections of society, which is the main motive force pushing
society forward.

Both
China and Australia are class societies in transition from capitalism
to communism. When China was socialist this did not mean it had some
new kind of "socialist mode of production" different from both the
"capitalist mode" involving commodities and wage labour and the
"communist mode" based on associated production organised by the
associated producers. It simply meant that there was a "socialist
system" in China, in which the power of Government, the power to make
and enforce laws, to manage enterprises, to dominate culture etc. was
in the hands of the proletariat and not the bourgeoisie. The radicals
held power and used it to radicalise society and speed up the
transition. As opposed to the conservatives holding power and using it
to hold society back, as in Australia and China today.

Both
in socialist China then, and in capitalist China now, and in capitalist
Australia, revolutionaries are in a small minority in society and so
are counter-revolutionaries. In China now, as in Australia, the small
minority of reactionary bourgeois elements hold political power, and
are accepted by the mass of the population. In socialist China the
minority of revolutionaries held power, with support from the masses.

The
kinds of political and social struggles that went on in a socialist
society like China was were not all that fundamentally different from
those that go on in a capitalist society like Australia or in China
today. This is because the two forces in opposition are similar, the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie, radicals and conservatives. The basic
issue is similar, whether to move forward to communism or backward to
capitalism. The basic mode of production is similar too, commodities
and wage labour. The big difference is which side is on top.

It
is perfectly obvious that the political and social struggles going on
in China today since the coup d'etat are basically the same as those
going on before it. Theoretical articles in Peking Review have exactly
the same themes as before, only the stand is reversed. I would argue
that there are close similarities to related struggles in Australia.

To
understand Chinese politics try to think about the kind of politics
that would exist in Australia after a revolution. Try to envisage the
kind of society in which radicals were on top and the businessmen on
the bottom. Reading Peking Review today with its talk about the "four
modernisations" one gets a clear picture of a society dominated by its
businessmen. The appeals to produce more and the appeals for stability
and unity reflect the same ideology as Malcom Fraser and Bob Hawke -
the ideology of the bourgeoisie. Of course they don't call themselves
the bourgeoisie anymore than Malcom Fraser or Bob Hawke does.

In
Australia the dominant bourgeois ideology puts struggle in terms of
whether to make more cake or to squabble over the distribution of the
cake. Communists raise a separate problem. Unlike reformists who argue
about the distribution of the cake, communists raise the question of
who is to run the kitchen. We call for "all power to the cooks". There
are important and fundamental differences, but quite similar issues
were being raised by Communists in China - from the much stronger
position of being a ruling party - and having nearly 4% of the
population as members.

Although
it may sound a bit unorthodox, the concept of socialist society that I
am elaborating is supported by repeated statements of the Chinese
leadership during Mao's lifetime. I think it was never fully
appreciated outside China at the time.

Take this statement of Mao's that was essentially written into the Chinese Party Constitution:

"Socialist
society covers a considerably long historical period. In the historical
period of socialism, there are still classes, class contradiction and
class struggle. There is the struggle between the socialist road and
the capitalist road, and there is the danger of capitalist restoration.
We must recognise the protracted and complex nature of this struggle.
We must heighten our vigilance. We must conduct socialist education. We
must correctly understand and handle class contradictions and class
struggle, distinguish the contradictions between ourselves and the
enemy from those among the people and handle them correctly. Otherwise
a socialist country like ours will turn into its opposite and
degenerate, and a capitalist restoration will take place. From now on
we must remind ourselves of this every year, every month and every day
so that we can retain a relatively sober understanding of this problem
and have a Marxist-Leninist line."

(Quoted in "The Capitalist Roaders are still on the Capitalist Road", p.1. Emphasis added)

The
usual reaction to that kind of statement is one of complacency. When in
1975-76 the Chinese leadership was saying that the capitalist roaders
were still on the capitalist road, that there was a life and death
struggle, that China could easily go revisionist etc., the general
reaction amongst Maoists in Australia was to assume that things must be
terrific because they are being so vigilant! As a result many people
were terribly surprised when it actually happened.

As
an orthodox Maoist I always took what Mao and the Maoists were saying
very seriously and therefore was not in the least surprised when it
turned out to be perfectly true. My identification was with the
revolutionaries in China, the "Gang of 4" etc.and not with whatever
happened to be written in Peking Review. What does surprise me is how
on earth Maoists could be surprised, or feel there is some need to
revise their estimation of Mao, because of developments since Mao's
death that exactly confirm the accuracy of his analysis.

It
was Lin Piao who said that the Cultural Revolution had solved the
problem of preventing capitalist restoration in a socialist country,
and had won final victory. He was promptly purged. Mao's line was
always that it hadn't and couldn't. There would need to be 30 or 40
Cultural Revolutions and there could be no "final" victory.

Let
us take some of the concrete issues that were fought over in China
before, and still are today. The reason that they were and are fought
over, is precisely because there were and are two sides. When Teng
Hsiao-ping was being vehemently denounced, it was not because he was
isolated and had no support. The same is true of the attacks on the
"Gang of 4" today. They are not isolated and they do not have no
support. Otherwise the revisionists wouldn't be so conserned to attack
them.

Leftists
in Australia tended to instinctively side with the "Gang of 4" (Maoist)
policies, and regarded opposition to them as incomprehensible in a
socialist society. When I say Leftists, I mean genuine Leftists. The
emergence of a trend in Australia that is wildly enthusiastic about the
new policies, indicates to me that their fundamental political outlook
just isn't Left wing.

But
in fact opposition to Left wing policies in socialist society is
perfectly understandable, and it was wrong to regard this opposition as
incomprehensible. Just as opposition to the Left in Australia is
perfectly understandable.

Take
education for example. We would all oppose the exam system and favour
giving preference to the children of workers and peasants over the
children of intellectuals. But concretely, this means that the children
of revolutionary cadres whose academic ability is greater than others,
who are patriotic, support socialism and can make major contributions
to technical progress in China, must give up theirplaces
to working class or peasant kids who in a fair examination would have
scored lower marks.Naturally there will be opposition to this, and it
will be strong opposition from the most articulate members of the
community - including some cadres whose children will be affected by
it. There will also be support for it amongst the large mass of the
population. But remember that at present only 1% of the workers and
peasants could get higher education anyway so it is not an immediate
consern for most, and they are the less articulate section of the
population.

We
would all support the breaking down of the Confucian authority of the
teacher, and favour building comradely relations between students and
teachers. But anyone who has ever taught will know just how difficult a
campaign against teacher authority would make life for teachers.
Naturally there will be opposition from many teachers who will find
life being utterly miserable and from conservative students who will
want to get on with their studies without being constantly involved in
political campaigns. Havn't we seen that kind of opposition in
Australia?

We
would all support sending educated youth to live in the countryside.
But don't forget that the Chinese countryside has a very low standard
of living indeed. Many educated youth would much prefer to live in the
city. Even in Australia, where the countryside is far less backward,
trainee teachers try to break their studentship bonds.

It
is obvious that socialist policies in Chinese education must give rise
to political and social struggles, just as they do in Australia. The
stuff in Peking Review about the destruction of Chinese education and
the holding up of modernisation, is not that different from stuff we
read here saying we should go back to the "3 R's" of Reading, Riting
and Rithmitic and stop all this "progressive nonsense" in the schools,
even though nobody is pushing reforms anywhere near as radical as the
Cultural Revolution.

Reactionaries
in Australia too, paint a similar picture of a devastated education
system. It is a fact that mass secondary education in Australia is
basically a post-war phenomena. There was only one high school in
Melbourne before the second world war. Yet there is a definite widely
held belief that educational standards have dramatically declined in
this period. Chinese reactionaries paint a far more dreadful picture of
what happened to their education system during the Cultural
Revolution,precisely because far more good things happened there.

Or
take the question of foreign investment. There is mass support for
foreign investment in Australia. So why wouldn't there be in China? It
provides a quick and easy way to increase the standard of living in a
country at the expense of its future. Equally there is mass opposition
to foreign investment in Australia, and no doubt there will be in China
too.

The
focus of struggle in most social institutions in Australia is between
the advocates of law and order and the advocates of rebellion. This is
even more complex in a socialist country where law and order is
supposed to be in the hands of the revolutionaries.

Anyone
who has worked in industry will understand how deeply entrenched
conservative opposition to the cooks running the kitchen can be - both
from management and from backward workers under bourgeois influence.

The
Gang of 4 have been accused of urging a recruiting policy for the
Chinese Communist Party that would only let people into the Party if
they had been gaoled during the Cultural Revolution or sacked from
their jobs at least twice. Without taking it literally that seems to me
to be a good approach. A Communist Party has to be a Party of rebels, a
Party of troublemakers. There is a massive pressure in a socialist
country for the ruling party to be filled with goody goodies who say
all the right things. Yet how can you exclude from the Party someone
who has consistently supported everything the Party leadership says and
never put a foot wrong? How can you maintain Party discipline when the
Chairperson is constantly saying "it is right to rebel" and calling on
people to seize power from the properly elected Party committees? Look
at the histories of revolutionary parties in capitalist countries. Is
degeneration so unusual?

I
think it is obvious that all of Mao's policies must meet opposition in
China. If there is some way one can promote revolution without meeting
opposition then I would like to know about it. If there is some way
revolution can proceed against opposition withoutsuffering
major defeats from time to time, I would be even more interested. This
has certainly never been Mao's view, nor Marx's. If reactionaries could
never win in a socialist society, they would have given up trying long
ago, and Mao's whole line about the central importance of continuing
the revolution would have been nonsense.

I
would like to quote a statement from Engels' introduction to Marx's
"The Class Struggle in France, 1848-1850" because I think it does apply
to recent events in China, and confirms that the orthodox Maoist
analysis is also an orthodox Marxist analysis:

"all
revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of
one definite class rule by another; but all ruling classes up to now
have only been small minorities in relation to the ruled mass of the
people...As a rule, after the first great success, the victorious
minority divided; one half was satisfied with what had been gained, the
other wanted to go still further and put forward new demands, which,
partly at least, were also in the real or apparent interest of the
great mass of the people. In individual cases these more radical
demands were actually forced through, but often only for a moment; the
more moderate party would gain the upperhand, and what had last been
won would be wholly or partly lost again; the vanquished would then
shriek of treachery or ascribe their defeat to accident. In reality,
however, the truth of the matter was largely this: the achievements of
the first victory were only safeguarded by the second victory of the
more radical party; this having been attained, and with it, what was
necessary for the moment, the radicals and their achievements vanished
once more from the stage."

Incidentally,
the revolutionaries in China did not ascribe their defeat to treachery
or accident. They put forward a very sober Marxist analysis of the
impending defeat, during the campaign against Teng Hsiao-ping.

For
example, see the Peking Review article "Proletarians are revolutionary
optimists" (September 3, 1976) which significantly explains how the
democratic revolutions took many years in different countries and were
always full of twists and turns and reverses.Also see the last issue of
"Study and Criticism" published in Shanghai, where they quote Lenin
saying "We have fought better than our forebears. Our children will
fight better than we do. They will surely win."

Engels
comment accurately describes the attitude of radicals to their defeat
in previous revolutions, where they attributed it to treachery or
accident. But since Marx, radicals have had a more sober understanding
of their position, or at least Marxists have.

Engels'
analysis is particularly applicable in a backward developing country
such as China, where the Communists have come to power leading a
democratic revolution when the bourgeoisie itself has been too flabby
to do so. Engels also expected the Communist Party to come to power in
Germany in that situation and outlined a prediction that similar events
would occur there. (Of course it didn't happen in Germany because the
Communist Party was just as flabby as the bourgeoisie ):

"I
have a presentiment that, thanks to the perplexity and flabbiness of
all the others, our Party will one fine morning be forced to assume
power and finally to carry out the interests that are of no direct
interest to us, but are in the general interests of the revolution and
the specific interests of the petty-bourgeoisie; on which occasion,
driven by the proletarian populace, bound by our own printed
declarations and plans - more or less falsely interpreted, more or less
passionately thrust to the fore in the Party struggle - we shall be
constrained to undertake communist experiments and perform leaps the
untimeliness of which we know better than anyone else. In so doing we
lose our heads - only physically speaking, let us hope - a reaction
sets in, and until the world is able to pass historical judgement on
such events, we are considered not only beasts, which wouldn't matter,
but also betes (stupid -Ed.), which is much worse. I do not quite see
how it can turn out otherwise. In a backward country like Germany,
which possesses an advanced party and is involved in an advanced
revolution with an advanced country like France, the advanced party
must get into power at the first serious conflict and as soon as actual
danger is present, and that is, in any event, ahead of its normal
time...

(Letter to Weydemeyer, April 12, 1853).

I
would like to conclude by saying that I view the events in China as an
inevitable defeat for a permanent revolution. I would see the future of
China as the future of other countries - the revolution continues.
There isn't any theory, and Mao Tsetung's Thought certainly isn't a
theory, that allows revolution to progress uninterruptedly without
defeat. You merely keep fighting as long and as hard as you can.

In
a socialist country you have to be prepared to fight from a position of
being Government Ministers and you also have to be prepared to fight
from a position of being driven underground. In capitalist society we
only get the opportunity of being able to fight from opposition and not
from Government.

There
is no reason to expect that in a socialist Australia with
revolutionaries in power a coup d'etat or peaceful evolution against
the revolution won't occur. But one thing is certain. The class
struggle would continue in Australia, as it does in China. Whatever
defeats occur can't wipe out the fact that there is a proletariat,
there is a bourgeoisie and in the long run society keeps on moving
forward - as it has since we came down from the trees. The reversals
can only move society backwards so far, whereas the factors for moving
it forward keep on developing.

"The future is bright. The road is
tortuous." Feudalism has not been restored in China, only capitalism!!